In the process of the occupation of Ceuta by television stars, there is a fact that draws attention to the way they explain what they see: the repetitive use of I that presenters make. They repeat that they are there to give a voice to the people of Ceuta, but the need they have to use the first person singular contradicts the most elementary principles of journalism. “Let me tell you why we have to be here”, said Risto Mejide. Among the phrases in his speech, he let out a repertoire full of I, me, me: “What matters to me is to narrate what is happening here”, “I refuse to say that all those who have entered are criminals”, “I feel especially proud that Mediaset has thrown itself into this day”, “I don't care. What matters to me is that our communication group has got involved and brought more presenters”, “I was on vacation, I was watching it and I couldn't believe it”.Another one who did the same was Nacho Abad, presenter of En boca de todos.. He opened the program confessing a thought to the audience: “During this month of August I have been mulling over an idea that I want to share with you”. After it became known that Abad had attended a reception at the Moroccan embassy, he sought to justify himself: “The same day of the invasion, I, Nacho, attended a reception at the Moroccan embassy. (...) I am going to answer. (...) First, I want to declare my loyalty to this country and my fidelity to this democracy. (...) I went to the Moroccan embassy showing my face, without hiding. (...) I don't like to be messed with and I went to the embassy to look for the ministers”.Iker Jiménez was live on El Trampolín beach very late at night: “One is left speechless”, “I have seen neighbors, I have spoken with lawyers, I have spoken with engineers who have asked me to tell what is happening”. He confessed: “I have been here for two days and it doesn't impress me so much anymore”. And he expressed his commitment to the audience: “I want to tell you, friends of Horizonte, as I would like to be informed”.The journalist must be a mediator and not the protagonist. This narcissism dynamites the criteria about what is relevant. It displaces the importance of facts by shifting it onto the presenter. Self-reference is artificial because it is a way of highlighting the act of making television and not the will to inform. In the place of facts, the journalist is a witness and, undoubtedly, has value. But one should not confuse observation with setting oneself up as a kind of just spokesperson. This idea of the savior self who believes that only he has the power to explain reality is a way of using people's suffering. Misfortune and misery are capitalized for the benefit of personal epic. The systematic use of the self has nothing to do with journalistic authority. The emphatic self is a factor of emotionality that discredits the narrative.

Those of us who are of a certain age and have some memory recall a phrase by Federico Jiménez Losantos on Cope radio during the Ibarretxe plan era: "The worst of all is Atutxa, because he seems good." Juan María Atutxa was then Minister of the Interior and would later become President of Parliament. It's curious, but hatred of the PNB is a classic of the Spanish right-wing press, a genre of its own in which the columnist for Abc" José F. Peláez, whom I didn't have the pleasure of knowing, now excels. But after reading his article "Is the PNB the worst in Spain?", I'm clear that a star has been born in the fatxosfèric universe.

Things don't really happen until the television stars arrive. On the first day of the regular season, the big media figures have landed in Ceuta not because the news required it more than last week, but simply because their holidays have ended. And they have returned criticizing that Pedro Sánchez has also taken some. The misery and drama that has been fermenting for weeks on the city's beaches and streets can now be exploited with the necessary sensationalism. And enough time has passed for many residents of Ceuta to finally see up close their heroines who come to save them all. Now the conflict is for real.Monday, the day began with the morning queens of Antena3 and Telecinco walking along El Trampolín beach. It's the day they put on jeans because they're acting as reporters. They walk among poverty, exquisite and stylish, demonstrating that, when necessary, they roll up their sleeves. Both magazines have recorded the presenters walking among shacks, looking around with concern, as if it were an advertisement. They also observe the provisional showers that have been installed and comment with astonishment on the improvised mosques or the clothing markets. The contrast between their sophistication and the panorama surrounding them is morbid, acquiring a kind of grotesque epic. The definitive proof that Ceuta's situation is serious is that even they have had to check it firsthand. Susanna Griso and Ana Rosa Quintana allow themselves to be touched by the women of Ceuta who admire them. Griso puts her arm around the shoulders of a woman who tells her they can't take it anymore and that they won't be able to take their children to school: “Don't worry, we're going to talk to a lot of people”, she tells her, as if she were a guarantee of a solution. The woman rests her head on her chest and cries. Ana Rosa's program has set up fences to protect its presenter and a crowd of ladies lean over. “Ana Rosa, you are our voice!” They give her fans and get emotional. Quintana takes them by the arm to convey support: “We are not going to leave them”, she consoles them. “In these difficult times, all Spaniards are Ceutians”, says Quintana as soon as she opens the program. She has brought Eduardo Inda, dressed in a guayabera, to Ceuta to be a commentator.The two sides of the story are unequal. The voice of the autochthonous citizens is live. The interventions of the Moroccans are always recorded. Griso listens to them without stopping much, and in the editing they only keep what she translates from their comments. They only have to extend the microphone and ask dramatic questions: “How much have you slept in recent weeks?” Everyone answers by loading against Pedro Sánchez. They know what is expected of them in these programs. The presenters ask them to show the pepper spray cans that women carry in their bags. Susanna Griso and Ana Rosa Quintana have not gone to Ceuta to explain anything we didn't know. Their mere presence serves to heighten the unease. They are not looking for anything else.

The program Salvados has announced for this Sunday, September 6, a special program about the figure of Rita Barberá, the mayor of Valencia who seemed indestructible and ended up splashed by the corruption scandals of the Valencian PP, cornered by her party and dying alone in a hotel room. The post of the program announcement has been filled with critical comments from people who consider that, given how everything is going (Ceuta, price increases, etc.), it was not the time to dedicate a report to Barberá. As for me, I will judge the result next Sunday, once I have seen the program, but I can anticipate that the summary that serves as promotion seems very interesting to me to portray an era and a certain way of doing politics.

Faced with the imminent arrival of Grand Theft Auto VI, Rockstar's blockbuster, the industry has agreed not to take risks and to bring forward its main releases to avoid direct confrontation with the big rival. The result is an exceptionally packed September, where several heavyweight bets for all platforms coexist.

This Sunday The World dares to put on the cover the idea that has been circulating for some time in the fachosphere with a formula reminiscent of Enric Juliana: "Aromas of '98 in the regime of '78". It is a quote in quotation marks from an anonymous voice analyzing the crisis from within, but the fact that they have decided to put it on the front page is significant. Spanish nationalism, which was so happy with the victory of the red, has entered a kind of existential crisis in Ceuta. It's as if it has suddenly become aware of the vulnerability of Spanish enclaves in Africa, and this leads to an unsolvable dilemma for Spaniards: to be able to have a border defensible it would be better to abandon Ceuta and Melilla, but then it would be as much as admitting that the Spanish nation is divisible and not inviolable.

L'ARA begins the course by renewing itself. Starting this Monday, the back pages of the newspaper will offer new content: author interviews that will be conversations with both well-known personalities, whose most intimate side will be revealed, and more anonymous figures with interesting stories to share. They will be chats with quick questions that will move away from current events to focus on essential issues and offer a particular worldview. The interviewers will be four staff writers and a collaborator: Àlex Gutiérrez, Laura Serra, Elena García Dalmau, Carla Turró, and Joan Burdeus. "They are interviewers with a lot of personality, intelligence, and a sense of humor," remarks Esther Vera, the newspaper's director. She adds that the redesign of the back page has been done without losing its value, as the columnists who were there until now will continue collaborating with the newspaper.

It has been a while since they became fashionable on television, the cairns creative and humorous in tone, following in the wake of programs like Pieces, but what is not acceptable is to cross the line of lighthearted programs and use the formula for news. Last Thursday on La Sexta, a particularly unfortunate one was seen related to the death in prison of war criminal Ratko Mladic: "The butcher of Bosnia, cold cuts". I always tell my journalism students to avoid wordplay in headlines at all costs, as it is a distortion that distracts from their primary function. In this case, I understand that the writer thought they could afford this presumably ingenious formula to provoke a smile from the viewer. But in this case, the writer must always, and first and foremost, put themselves in the shoes of the victims of a bloodthirsty figure like Mladic, who coldly planned and executed the murder of 8,000 Bosnians in Srebrenica, the largest massacre to occur in Europe since World War II.

[Each summer, ARA dedicates a series of Sunday Media articles to reviewing television history. This year we are rescuing some of the most notable channel changes experienced by historical fiction].

It is common that when a media outlet breaks an exclusive, they claim the topic and follow it up in detail, among other things to prevent others from appropriating it. "This topic must be ours," is often heard in newsrooms. This is precisely what is happening these days The Country with the news of Isabel Díaz Ayuso's penthouse, revealed on July 28 and which is still ongoing, to the despair of the Madrid president, who on August 24 complained that "the gum could no longer be stretched" on the penthouse, in that speech crowned by a very traditional "goodbye fish". But The Country has continued to publish information almost every day, and even a delicious piece on which the obsession of Spaniards with penthouses was analyzed based on cinematographic references such as Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Barça's decision to suspend the tribute to the world champions has caused an earthquake on social media and a certain degree of discomfort in some Catalan press. Only this explains, for example, that this topic does not appear on the cover of the "Sport and be frankly hidden in the of World Sport. In programs like The Jugones beach bar, as was to be expected, they jumped on it and accused Joan Laporta of mixing politics and sport, of dividing Barcelonismo, and of positioning himself in favor of the independentists. And well, there are several reflections to be made here.

Returning to routine after the holidays is lighter when we have entertainment to accompany the ordeal. The course kicks off with many British productions spread across different platforms. The offer includes premiere series and also new seasons of already known titles.

A few days ago, Vox spread the idea that they had banned the halal menu in Valencian schools. The majority of media outlets took the bait and debates for and against multiplied on social media. But it turns out it wasn't true. The newspaper El Paíspublishes this Wednesday a report by journalist Ignacio Zafra that is an example of good journalism. Zafra has looked into the details of the approved regulation, which only states that, in the case of meat, "the slaughter of the animal must have been carried out using a prior stunning procedure", and has confirmed with sources from the meat sector that most halal products already comply with this requirement. Immediately after, he called the Ministry of Education and they confirmed to him that the claim of the ban is false, and that schools can continue to offer menus according to students' beliefs, whether for religious, medical or any other reason. For example, if a vegan menu is desired.

Tanned and full of energy after a few days of rest before starting a new project, Clara Sans (Barcelona, 1996) premieres the new miniseries, Toda la verdad de mis mentiras, starting Friday, August 28 on Netflix. In this adaptation of a novel by Elísabet Benavent she plays Blanca, a girl who is about to get married. Her bachelorette party will be the excuse for two of her best friends, Coco (Itziar Manero) and Marín (Daniel Ibáñez), to acknowledge their feelings for each other.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump assured without any proof that Haitian immigrants were eating the cats and dogs of Springfield, Ohio neighbors. That had no real basis, and in any normal country it would have meant the absolute disqualification of the politician, but in the United States, as everyone knows, Trump won the elections by a landslide. I have thought about this in recent days, seeing that some Spanish media, mostly from the 'fatxosfera' (far-right sphere), have published news denouncing that immigrants from Ceuta devour cats, pigeons, seagulls, and any other animal that runs in the street. In one of these news items, a photograph was attached showing a dead cat next to a dumpster. Fortunately, the Efe agency's fact-checking service carried out the relevant checks and ruled that the photograph was neither from now nor from Ceuta, but was from 2025 and from Gran Canaria.

From time to time a controversy erupts because a columnist reveals that an article has been censored, and announces that they are leaving the newspaper in question amid accusations of persecution and warning that freedom of expression is in danger. The latest example has been that of notary Juan José López Burniol at La Vanguardia. In these cases, I believe it is necessary to educate to explain why it is an obligation for newspapers to exercise censorship. The media have an editorial line, which is expressed through editorials, and then they have an expanded editorial line that draws a framework that includes everything that can be published in that newspaper. The premise is very clear: a medium does not have to agree with the opinion of its columnists, but it does have a social responsibility towards society and, therefore, must decide which ideas it wants to be a mouthpiece for and which it does not.

Who hasn't found themselves immersed, these hot days, in an absurd discussion with someone from Madrid or Aragon about whether Catalonia was ever an independent territory or if they were mere counties dependent on the Kingdom of Aragon? About whether Jaume I was Catalan or Aragonese? In these cases, it's always good to have a good historical summary at hand, like the one published these days in the newspaperEl Punt Avuiby historian Cristian Palomo. This is precisely one of the functions of the press: to translate historiographical (or scientific in general) erudition into educational pieces accessible to the general public. Not everyone needs to know the genealogical tree of the House of Barcelona inside out, but we should have some basics that allow us to easily and quickly discredit some theses.

[Every summer, ARA dedicates a series of Sunday Media articles to reviewing television history. This year, we are bringing back some of the most talked-about channel changes that historical fictions underwent].

If there is one thing the far-right does well, it's playing the victim. Since they present themselves as anti-system, any criticism they receive from the media is used to claim that the establishment is persecuting them, etc., and it's usually a discourse that resonates with their followers and from which they benefit. A textbook example has occurred these days in Germany, when the magazine "The Mirror has published a cover with a close-up photo of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, and the headline: "Germany's most dangerous man".

Since social networks became part of our daily lives, an ecosystem of new celebrities has emerged: influencers. They are people who very often show idyllic lives, in many cases subsidized by the brands that hire them to advertise them. Their content is not harmless and this summer some of the controversial opinions of these idols have caused a breeding ground to be generated, baptized as the fall of influencers, which predicts the decline of these public figures.